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OS X 10.10 Yosemite: The Ars Technica Review

For the first time in forever, the Mac could be noticed by someone.

Grab bag

When it comes to finding new details in the nooks and crannies of OS X, Yosemite’s sweeping graphical update is the gift that keeps on giving. Even after months of using Yosemite, I’m still routinely surprised by a new icon, cursor, or interface layout. There are plenty of minor functional changes as well. Here are a few favorites.

Activity Monitor

Earlier versions of Activity Monitor required a tedious mouse-over-and-wait action to see the URL associated with a Safari back-end process. The new Activity Monitor in Yosemite helpfully shows the URL in place of the unhelpful “Safari Web Content” process name.

It’s now much easier to use Activity Monitor to find and kill the process behind a misbehaving Safari tab.

Terminal

While third-party alternatives like iTerm still offer many more features, the sturdy, dependable OS X Terminal application has always met my needs. It’s also an application that has, at times, had less than one whole Apple developer dedicated to it. These days, any change at all is noteworthy. The most visible addition in Yosemite is an in-window scrollback search interface that replaces the old, awkward dialog box.

Terminal’s new inline search field. Our baby’s all grown up…

Messages

In another refreshing instance of platform parity, Yosemite’s Messages application includes audio message support (click the microphone button to the right of the text input field) plus the ability to mute or leave a group chat. New participants can also be added to an existing group chat. If one or more people are sharing their location information with you, a map will appear in the “Details” popover with each person’s avatar correctly placed. Thumbnails of images sent as part of the conversation are collected at the bottom of the popover.

New group chat features lurk under a popover spawned from a decidedly iOS-like borderless button in Messages.

JavaScript automation

It’s been a while since the “open” part of Apple’s Open Scripting Architecture has been meaningfully exploited; AppleScript is the only OSA language most Mac users know (if they know any at all). In Yosemite, Apple has stepped up to the plate and added a JavaScript OSA front-end based on WebKit’s JavaScriptCore engine. As a cherry on top, there’s a built-in Objective-C bridge, opening up the world of Cocoa and even plain old C to your humble JavaScript code.

Remember, the application is called Script Editor, not AppleScript Editor.

System Preferences

Like the rest of Yosemite, System Preferences has received a nearly complete visual overhaul. The new preference pane icons are not quite as immediately appealing as the best of the new application icons, but they are pleasant enough.

Notifications is the most changed, but I’m not sure it evokes its namesake any better than the old icon. Energy Saver has been upgraded from a CFL bulb to an LED. Apple still doesn’t quite know what to do with the General icon, but at least it looks familiar. The Date & Time icon is new, but the date still never changes from the 18th. (At least we now know what month it’s frozen in: July.) The Startup Disk icon still depicts a spinning hard disk despite the increasing prevalence of solid-state drives. Either way, it’s always been strange that Apple has chosen to use an image of a part from inside its computers as an interface icon. Like the floppy-disk save icon, this bit of mechanical history may be with us for a while yet.

The newly combined title bar and toolbar now includes back/forward buttons. A grid of tiny dots replaces the “Show All” button text. Navigating with these three controls means passing back through the main screen each time you want to open a new preference pane. The back/forward buttons dutifully replay this history, with every other step showing the full set of preference panes. Moving directly from one preference pane to another using the View menu produces a more sensible navigation history, but who does that? I’m not sure how many people even know that menu exists.

If Apple wants to improve preference pane navigation, I’d much prefer a customizable toolbar that would let me add buttons for my most frequently used preference panes.

General

The new “dark mode” and Handoff checkboxes were mentioned earlier, but there’s one more change worth mentioning. The default Web browser is now selected here instead of in Safari’s own preferences.

Desktop & Screen Saver

A nice collection of photos from Yosemite National Park are included for your desktop viewing pleasure. In exchange, we have lost the hard-won setting to disable menu bar translucency, and the underlying property list setting no longer seems to be honored. If you don’t care to see what’s behind your menu bar, going fully opaque may be your only option.

New pictures of Yosemite National Park, but no more translucent menu bar toggle.

Security & Privacy

There’s a new setting in the Diagnostics & Usage section to control whether this information is shared with third-party developers in addition to Apple itself. Both options are checked by default.

You get a crash report! You get a crash report! Everybody gets a crash report!

The Location Services privacy list now covers System Services (currently just Spotlight Suggestions). There’s also a separate option, disabled by default, to display the location services menu bar icon when system services request location information.

Options for the use of Location Services by parts of the operating system itself.

Notifications

When Do Not Disturb mode is engaged, Yosemite no longer offers the option to allow FaceTime calls from your favorite people only; it’s everyone or no one. The customization options available in the newly redesigned Notification Center replace the old setting to enable and disable Share Buttons in the Notification Center sidebar.

App Store

There’s a new option to install OS X updates automatically. Like the similar option for application updates, automatic OS updates are disabled by default. But something tells me it’s only a matter of time before both of those defaults are reversed.

The new option to install OS updates automatically is not on by default… for now.

John Siracusa
John Siracusa has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University. He has been a Mac user since 1984, a Unix geek since 1993, and is a professional web developer and freelance technology writer. Emailsiracusa@arstechnica.com//Twitter@siracusa